FOUR members of the IATSS Forum Alumni Association (Malaysia) will be attending the 26th IATSS forum in Japan.

Daniel Liew Ming Ch'ze, Norhana Yahya, Esther Boucher and Sharifah Hafizah Syed Abdul Kadir will be joining their Asean counterparts for a three-month course. Liew is a senior corporate training consultant with Direct Impact Training Consultancy in Malaysia and Singapore, Norhana is an entrepreneur, Boucher is from Brunei while Sharifah Hafizah is a journalist.

IATSS Forum stands for the International Association of Traffic and Safety Science Forum held in Suzuka, Japan for selected groups of youths from Asean countries comprising Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines,Singapore,Vietnam and Malaysia.

Funded by the Honda Foundation, it offers a unique opportunity for young people from Asean countries to be exposed to Japan, its people and culture, their way of life and work ethics, since the mid 1980s.

Participants learn about the various aspects of the Japanese lifestyle, economy, philosophy, way of thinking, decision-making and problem-solving, corporate planning as well as their art and culture. The group will be taken on visits to cities like Nagoya, Kyoto, Nara, Osaka, Okayama, Hagi, Ise-Shima, Hiroshima and Tokyo as well as stay with Japanese families and take part in on-the-job training.

Four people in the 25th group have returned. They are Cheryl Teh (IT consultant with Putra Net), Lee Kian Foh, who is with Anderson Consulting, and Anuar Nawawi, an accountancy lecturer at the Mara Institute of Technology. The fourth member of the group, Mohamad Rafie Sakhibun, is with the group purchasing department at the Proton assembly plant in Shah Alam.

Teh said the experience was a turning point in their lives. The association's president Zuraidah Atan said former participants should take time off to be at the Rumah Unversiti to share their experiences and give moral support to the new participants while at the same time catch up on the latest development.

First published in Life & Times, News Straits TImes on May 12 1998. Copyright © The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad. All rights reserved.